There Are No Distractions

I really like Senator Chris Murphy. He has been on the right side of most issues since the second Trump administration came to power, and he has been a good, strong voice of opposition. Which is why his response to the invasion of DC has been so disappointing.

This Bluesky post is representative, but it is not the only one like it on the subject matter. I cannot embed Bluesky posts in this newsletter, so the text is below:

All just a stunt to distract from the economy being a mess, health premiums about to go up by 75%, Epstein coverup. But the media keeps covering like its straight news about crime in DC.

He treats the invasion as a distraction from other issues — the tariffs harming the economy, Trump’s connections to Epstein, etc. And while Trump is trying to draw attention away from those issues, treating the invasion of DC — or his attempt to remove history from the Smithsonian or radically gerrymander the House, or his nonsense about banning mail in voting with an executive order — is a grave, grave mistake. These items are bad in and of themselves. They are not a distraction in the sense that they do not deserve attention. Quite the opposite. Many of these things are direct threats to democratic government. Others are an attack on the American character. They are mostly worse than the things they are supposedly distracting from (with the exception of evidence that Trump was involved with abusing the children and women Epstein assaulted.). And that appears to be a problem for the Democratic party as a whole.

The world has gone out that “distraction” is the line of attack, apparently. Murphy is in no way the only senior Democrat taking this approach. There have been essentially no attacks on the Trump invasion of DC on the merits. In fact, several centrists have pretended that crime, despite have dropped significantly and being low for a city its size, is an actual problem in DC and the Democrats should not criticize Trump on the merits. Problem is, the merits are very, very bad.

This is a clearly a pre-textual attempt to rip home rule away from a largely Black city, lie about crime in Democratic cities (all five of the states sending troops for the invasion have, at minimum, cities with much higher crimes rates than DC and some have a statewide crime rate higher than DC). The same is true for the election interference, the attacks on the Smithsonian, even, to a certain extent, the gerrymander push, or the attack on minorities and LGTBQ+ people. The consultant class has convinced themselves of two things that are largely false: the last election was lost because of a focus on the “groups” and that it is impossible to persuade voters. As a result, they insist that everything be run through the imaginary kitchen table, and anything is a “distraction”. Those misconceptions are helping destroy the country.

Trump is very likely happy to not be talking about the Epstein list, or how his tariffs are trashing the economy, especially in red states. But the problem for Democrats is that he distracts not with bread and circuses but with terrible, terrible actions. Pretending that these terrible things are not, in fact, terrible enough to merit opposition is completely counterproductive. It makes the Democrats look as if they do not care about fundamental betrayals of the Constitution, their voters, and the values of the country. And that makes them appear weak, unwilling to fight.

This version of the American Republic is gone. It is not coming back. The norms and institutions have fallen to an active authoritarian, proving their inadequacy. This does not mean, of course, that we are doomed to a life of competitive authoritarianism or worse. It does mean, however, that we need people who are willing to challenge power, willing to fight, willing to force a new beginning after we have survived this disaster. Our hope is not in people playing not to lose but rather in people willing to go all out to win. The distraction people are missing the main chance and will not be the leaders when we come out the other side of this.

Even if they are otherwise normally good Senators.